Frequently asked questions

This page sums up a large amount of questions, along with accurate answers.
If you cannot find your problem on this page, or here (if it's a survival-related question), feel free to ask around on the forums.
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A: To use a custom skin, you must first purchase the game. You can then go to your profile page on the Minecraft website, download the reference skin, edit it to your liking and finally upload your customized skin also at the preferences page. You should now appear with your new look whenever you play. You need to log into your account for it to show. However, if you often play single player offline and find yourself uncomfortable because you are wearing the default skin, you can use a compression archive manager such as 7zip or WinRAR to extract the file named "minecraft.jar" (the location of this file can be found using the "options" button on the Minecraft launcher), enter the sub-folder "mob", and directly edit the picture "char.png" using your favorite image editing program. Be sure to keep the picture the same size, name, and location as it was when you first opened it, or else Minecraft may not recognize it and will not run correctly. Although this method causes your character to wear your custom skin all of the time, other people on multiplayer servers may not see your skin because they are not using the "minecraft.jar" in which you changed the default player skin. To ensure maximum over-all visibility of your custom skin, one might recommend that you go through both processes mentioned in this paragraph. However, the second process mentioned in this paragraph will probably not work for Minecraft Classic.

A: Yes. Water can be picked up with a bucket and placed in other locations to form a spring. Water will drain downwards and outwards when filling spaces adjacent to the spring and the flow will stop when the source block is picked up. However, the general "sea" level never changes.

In Classic, the water level is set by the level of the ocean border surrounding the map, and so cannot change. Water will fill any adjacent empty space and even a single water block acts as an infinite source that is capable of flooding everything at or below its height. Some custom multiplayer servers allow players to "build" both active and static water blocks, and it is also possible to add water to your own maps by using an editor.

A: See Controls. The controls can be found beneath the creative mode gameplay window and are customizable from the pause menu (accessible by pressing Escape). In minecraft, the "Controls..." menu can be found in the "Options..." menu. By default, these are:

A two-button mouse is required for mouselook. In general, hold left mouse button to destroy blocks or punch Mobs, right-click to place blocks, activate certain blocks, or eat food. An alternative to Left Ctrl for sprinting is double-tapping the direction key. Sprinting can only be in forward direction.

A: You can drop a complete stack of items by picking it up in the inventory screen and then closing the inventory screen. The stack of items you were holding will be dropped. You can also grab a stack and click with it outside the inventory window to throw it. Pressing Ctrl+Q throws a stack of items.

Leaving items in the inventory's or the crafting table'scrafting square will cause them to be dropped when the inventory is closed.

A: In the full game, the spawn location is where you start out at the beginning of a map and you will return there if you are killed. This spawn point can be changed by sleeping in a Bed or using the /spawnpoint command. There are also unofficial mods in which you can change the spawn point. There is a command entitled /setworldspawn which changes the spawnpoint of the entire world.

In Classic your spawn location starts out as the default that the admin set. This can then be changed by pressing Enter, saving your current location so that you will respawn there when R is pressed.

Q: How do you make plants grow? They keep disappearing on me.[edit | edit source]

A: This depends on the plant's needs for its surroundings and the light level. If you are growing underground (not directly exposed to sky), you need to have adequate lighting or the crop will uproot itself. Grass only grows on dirt and needs light level of 4 or higher to spread (see its requirements for more details). Mushrooms, however, will only spread onto solid blocks with a light level lower than 12 (see mushroom farming for more details).

Q: Why does my building collapse / get destroyed on its own?[edit | edit source]

A:Sand and gravelblocks are subject to gravity. A sand or gravel block that has no blocks underneath it will fall until hits another block.

Wood, wooden planks, and many other materials are flammable, and may be set on fire if placed near fire or lava, or lit by Flint and Steel. Other possible causes of a missing or damaged house could be Endermen carrying away the blocks of your house (If made of blocks that an Enderman can carry) or explosions caused by a creeper or TNT. If you are playing on multiplayer, your house could have been griefed (destroyed purposely by other players). Also, however unlikely, your house may have been hit by lightning and set on fire.

A:Sand, gravel, anvils and dragon eggs will fall into empty space directly underneath them. TNT is subject to gravity only when primed (because it turns into an entity). Lava and water are fluid and will flow from their source block. All other blocks—dirt, stone, glass, etc.—are not affected by gravity.In the PE edition snow layers are affected by gravity.

A: None of the plants naturally present do, but if you plant saplings in a lit area with enough space above and around them, they will grow into small or large trees if given time. You can also use bone meal to make them grow much faster. Mushrooms can also be grown; however, they can only be grown by using bone meal.

A:Notch is the creator of Minecraft, as well as its former lead developer. He was the Lead Developer for a long time, until on December 2, 2011 when he stepped down and gave developer Jeb the title of Lead Developer. Notch stated that he will not work on Minecraft any longer as he is testing his new coding skills on making different games. Notch later left Mojang after it was acquired by Microsoft.

A: It depends, however some servers can have bullies, inappropriate language, griefers, (People who destroy player-made buildings for fun and for annoyance). Generally, small servers have less griefers, and servers with anti-griefing plugins. If you don't want to be exposed to inappropriate language, most servers will block swear words. If you don't want bullies, having a private server for you and your friends should completely fix your problem. On Minecraft server websites, read the comments as well as the description, because the commenters can expose nasty information about the server that you would have otherwise learned first-hand (the hard way).

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